1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to toy building blocks of an educational nature and in particular building blocks having alphabetical and other indicia thereon for educational exercises and word games.
Alphabetical blocks have long been a part of children's play and education and there continue to be many kinds of alphabet blocks available. These blocks take various sizes, shapes, designs and may be made of different materials. Also, there are numerous children's building blocks that do not contain letters of the alphabet or other intelligence indicia. The field of the present invention is that of adding greater flexibility to building blocks to enhance their educational use in word building and other exercises.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Traditional building blocks come in cubes each of which has a letter of the alphabet displayed on one or more of its sides and these letters are fixed in place on the blocks.
In addition to the traditional alphabet blocks, there are currently other kinds of highly manipulative building blocks that interlock with each other to form block structures of various types. For many years they have been used for manipulative play and, in education for teaching, counting, measuring and other mathematical concepts rather than word building.
Because these latter blocks have no letter of the alphabet or indicia they have no capability for use in word building. Furthermore, the ordinary and customary method of creating alphabet blocks, i.e., imprinting a letter of the alphabet on one or more sides of the block is problematic when applied to these non-alphabet blocks because of their attachment points. Since there are no blank sides on which to place the letters, the attachment points on the different sides of the blocks interfere with the letter of the alphabet graphics. Another problem is presented by the need to change the orientations of the letters so that they appear upright when the blocks are connected in different directions.
An example of prior art word and alphabet games is U.S. Pat. No. 3,077,677 which provides a board having recesses adapted to receive alphabet pieces each of which has a peg projection to be received in the board recesses. In this way words may be constructed and word games engaged in.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,139,698 shows a set of building blocks of the type that lack letters of the alphabet but which can be attached one to another in various combinations to produce structures or figures. British Patent No. 11,304 discloses another type of board arrangement in which letter blocks with projections can be received by the pegboard to produce words and word games.